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Your photo as a 1940s photograph

Erafy makes a new picture from your photo with whichever camera the decade hands you: a daylight box, the first flash box, a 35mm with a hazy uncoated lens, or a colour slide.

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AI photo app · Free to download · iPhone · 18+

Black-and-white 1940s street portrait of a woman in a tailored jacket

Nobody in the examples is a real person — the before photos are invented faces. These are our best results, not average ones. Sometimes AI can't handle it and modifies your face. All we can offer is a try.

How photographs changed in the 1940s

At the start of the decade the family album still ran on a box camera loaded with orthochromatic film that forgave a bad guess and could not see red: pale skies, dark lips, the picture posed in open sun. Then three new things came in.

In 1940 the first box camera with synchronised flash arrived, firing a single-use bulb from a side reflector, and birthdays indoors became snapshots: one hard frontal pop, a hot near subject, the room black a few feet behind, a hard low shadow, red eyes, startled faces and no smoke.

Cheap 35mm cameras made the small negative a mass format, 36 frames to a roll instead of eight, on panchromatic film that saw red: skies with clouds, natural skin. The price was grain, every print being an enlargement, and the uncoated lenses flared and went hazy against the light. Keen amateurs shot colour too, as slides mailed away for processing and returned in cardboard mounts.

Erafy draws from these at random, so 1940 may return as a daylight box print, a flash snapshot, a grainy 35mm enlargement or a slide, aged eighty-odd years. With Situation on: a jitterbug couple at the dance hall, a woman downtown in a tilt hat and gloves. Before this, the 1930s; every year is on the eras page.

More from the 1940s

  • 1940 · two seconds, silent

Other years

  • Sepia 1900 portrait of a woman in a high-collared blouse on a city street with horse carriages
    1900Early roll film, black and white
  • 1910 early colour photograph of a woman in a lace blouse seated at a garden table
    1910Glass plates, film packs and early colour plates
  • Black-and-white 1920s street portrait of a woman in a pale dress and a long pearl necklace
    1920Orthochromatic black and white
  • Sepia 1930s street photo of a woman in a floral dress holding a handbag
    1930Roll-film snapshots
  • Black-and-white 1950s street portrait of a woman in a cardigan and plaid skirt
    1950Black and white, and the first colour
  • Black-and-white 1960s street photo of a woman in a gingham sundress beside parked cars
    1960Colour slides and black and white
  • Faded 1970s colour photo of a woman in a floral blouse on a sunny street
    1970Warm, faded colour film
  • 1980s colour snapshot of a woman in a striped sweater in a bedroom with posters and a TV
    198035 mm colour, pocket cameras, flash
  • 1990s colour film photo of a woman in a green sweater and jeans on a campus street
    1990Drugstore colour film and disposables
  • 2000 colour snapshot with a date stamp: a woman in a lilac T-shirt on a campus walkway
    2000Date stamps and the first digital cameras
  • 2010 phone photo with a heavy vignette: a woman sitting by a city waterfront
    2010Early phone cameras
  • 2013 filtered phone selfie of a woman by a stone arch in a city park
    2013Retro filter apps
  • 2016 phone photo of a woman at a café table with a latte
    2016Phone portrait mode
  • 2019 phone photo of a woman on a beach at sunset
    2019Night mode and ultrawide
  • 2022 phone photo of a woman at a café with a latte
    2022The modern phone camera
  • 2025 phone photo of a woman at a café table with latte art
    2025Today's phones

Questions

Did ordinary people have flash in the 1940s?

From 1940, yes. The first box camera with a flash synchronised to its shutter fired a single-use bulb from a side reflector, so a birthday party indoors could be photographed without the powder and smoke of earlier years. The pictures are easy to spot: a bright face, a black room behind and one hard shadow.

Were there colour photos in the 1940s?

Yes, but mostly as slides. A slow colour slide film had been on sale since 1936; you mailed the roll away and got back small mounted transparencies to project or hold up to the light, vivid and warm. A colour print film followed in early 1942 and was rare, with prints that faded quickly.

What would I look like in the 1940s?

Erafy makes a new picture from your photo in the style of the year you pick, so how much it resembles you varies from one go to the next. It varies most in the black-and-white years and in the crafts before 1900, where faces are drawn in the craft's style. We make no promise about how any result will look.

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